Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to announce 2013 inductees in a press conference next Tuesday, December 11th

UPDATE - 12/10@2:37PM:According to ABC News Radio, Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) will be unveiling the 2013 Rock Hall inductees at a press event at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live in Los Angeles tomorrow 11AM PST (2PM EST). Flea was inducted to the Rock Hall as a member of RHCP last year, and also happens to be a big Rush fan.

Early last month the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced their annual list of nominees for induction and much to our surprise Rush was one of the 15 artists included on the list. Over the past 2 months a group of 600 or so rock historians, music industry insiders and past inductees voted to see which of these 15 nominees should be included in the 2013 induction class. The Rock Hall also created for the first time ever a fan ballot where fans could vote in an online poll that would count as one vote towards the official tally. Voting closed this past Monday and Rush was the clear winner of the poll with Deep Purple, Heart, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Albert King also making the ballot. A few voting committee members have publicly announced their ballot choices including music critic Michael Norman, and he voted for Rush too as detailed in this Cleveland Plain Dealer article. Last week the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum named Greg Harris as its new President and CEO, replacing the retiring Terry Stewart. Harris was on the Lanigan and Malone show on Cleveland's Magic 105.7 earlier today and revealed that the 5 or 6 members of the 2013 class of inductees will be announced in a press conference to be held next Tuesday, December 11th. You can listen in to the interview online at this location; he makes the announcement at around the 12:15 mark. The Future Rock Legends site made their predictions as to who will be inducted and included Rush on their list:

This is the seventh year of the Future Rock Legends induction poll, which mimics the voting on the Rock Hall ballot. Every year, the top vote-getter in our poll has been inducted, but we have never felt less confident that the results of our poll have any correlation to the results of the Voting Committee. But our bet is that the Rock Hall won't give the middle finger to all of the fans by snubbing Rush in the same year they start an official fan poll that Rush absolutely dominated. (Deep Purple is the other overwhelming fan favorite in the polls, but it just doesn't seem possible both Rush and Purple would be inducted in the same year.)

I tend to agree with that assessment, although I'm still holding out hope that Deep Purple also makes the cut. You can read Geddy Lee's reaction to the band's Rock Hall nomination in this post and Alex Lifeson's here.